JANIS THORNTON

My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 16: Nora Coleman & Sepharna Gleason

9/29/2020

Every day of her 29 years, Nora Coleman had dutifully endured her neglectful mother’s verbal and emotional abuse. She might have continued to put up with it if she hadn’t found herself in a “delicate condition.” But her 67-year-old mother, Sepharna Gleason, hated children and frequently threatened that if Nora should ever give birth, Sepharna would “throw the brat into the fire and watch it burn.” Nora would not tolerate such threats against her unborn child.

So, the evening of February 6, 1918, Nora snuck into her in-law’s house and helped herself to a shotgun. From there, she continued on to her mother’s rural Angola farm and hid the gun behind a tree.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 15: Dee, Homer & Jesse McClure

9/27/2020

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Jesse McClure laid down his son
And blew his brains out with a gun.
When he saw what he had done
He did it to his other son.
— Hoosier folk song, author unknown

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 14: The Agrues & Dink Carter

9/25/2020

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I visited River View Cemetery on a pleasant, sunny afternoon in August 2020. The cemetery is located just south of the southeastern Indiana city of Aurora along the Ohio River in Dearborn County. Established in 1869, River View is a gorgeous cemetery with lots of historic character, occupying 30 acres of heavily wooded, rolling hills a stone’s throw from the river.

I spent my first half-hour there wandering the grounds just past the main entrance in search of five members of the Johnson Agrue family, buried there in 1941. I found them side-by-side near the top of the hill. A casual cemetery visitor might pass by these small markers and never imagine the horrific, senseless death that had befallen each grave’s occupant.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 13: Garnet Ginn

9/23/2020

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Garnet Ginn, a 33-year-old Portland High School home economics teacher, was loved by students and faculty alike. She was close to completing her master’s degree and had her future looked bright. She had everything to live for.

But on Tuesday, February 28, 1950, Ginn failed to show up for her classes. Phone calls to her were unanswered, prompting the school superintendent to go to Ginn’s house to see what was the matter. Finding no one home, he peeked in her garage and called the police.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 12: Richard Gladden

9/21/2020

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Richard Gladden spent 36 years in prison paying for his wife’s carbon monoxide poisoning death, a crime he did not commit. Or so he said.

The night of February 1, 1932, the couple — Gladden, then 21, and Dolores, 20 — had wanted some alone time under the stars. So they went for a drive in their Whippet coupe and parked on the side of a gravel road east of Frankfort. To fend off the winter cold, Gladden kept the motor running and cranked up the heater. But before he knew it, they had both dozed off. When he awoke two hours later, the motor was dead. And so was Dolores. On the thinnest of evidence, the Clinton County sheriff locked up Gladden and charged him with her murder. Within three months, Gladden was tried, convicted, and sentenced to life in the Indiana State Penitentiary.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 11: A.J. Baker

9/19/2020

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Thanks to several shots of whiskey, Fred Kaiser finally mustered the courage to confront Andrew J. Baker, the man he believed was sleeping with Mrs. Kaiser.

So, at six o’clock Friday evening, September 3, 1903, at downtown Elwood’s busiest intersection in front of a dozen witnesses, Kaiser stepped up to Baker and threw back his hand.

Without hesitation, Baker drew his gun and shot Kaiser point blank in the chest. Baker claimed self-defense, but the grand jury thought otherwise and charged him with murder.

Baker, a well-to-do butcher who operated a meat market a few doors south of the shooting, was jailed without bail for four months awaiting his day in court and 11 more waiting for a re-trial.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 10: Dan Snider

9/17/2020

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After 8-year-old Mollie King and her mother, Hannah King Snider, suffered identical mysterious, excruciating illnesses resulting in their deaths in the late summer of 1876, the Tipton County coroner had their stomachs sent to the Indiana Medical College for analysis. The results showed that both mother and daughter had died of strychnine poisoning, and the obvious suspect was Hannah’s opportunistic young husband, Dan.

The next day, a Tipton County judge issued an arrest warrant, and Snider was taken to jail, tried, convicted of first-degree murder, and sentenced to life in prison. But in 1893, after he’d served 17 years, his supporters presented Indiana Governor Claude Matthews a petition, demanding that he pardon Snider. Surprisingly, the governor obliged, but warned Snider he'd best “keep his nose clean.”

Two years later, Snider blew it and was arrested in Grant County for stealing a horse and buggy. He walked out of the state prison for the second and final time in March of 1897, settled down in Tipton, took a new bride, and established himself as an upholsterer and carpenter.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 9: Grover & Louisa Blake

9/15/2020

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Twenty-two-year-old Grover Blake could never recall exactly why he had taken the claw hammer from the kitchen closet that March morning of 1908 and bashed in his mother’s brains. He had only wanted some of her secret stash for a friendly game of cards. Considering how much Louisa Blake, 46, adored her only son, she probably would have given him what he wanted had he merely thought to ask.

Blake had been out drinking all night before he stumbled home that morning, murdered his mom, freshened up, and dashed out to meet a buddy at an uptown Anderson bar before heading out of town. Traveling north, he made it to Fort Wayne before he was caught by the Madison County sheriff and his deputies.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 8: Fairy McClain-Miller

9/13/2020

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Beautiful, 24-year-old Fairy McClain-Miller of Kokomo was a confident, headstrong woman, who loved life. She had recently ended a volatile on-again-off-again relationship with boyfriend Jesse Worley Osborn, and she relished her fresh start.

When she retired to her bed the night of April 7, 1908, she had no reason to fear she would die before dawn.

Even when Osborn, who was drunk out of his mind, barged uninvited into her bedroom and awakened her, she wasn’t afraid. She was angry. The more he pestered her, the angrier she became.

Nevertheless ... he leaned in and demanded a kiss. With that, she pushed him away and told him to leave or she would report his disgusting buffoonery to the one person Osborn cared about—his father.

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My Road Trip with the Dead, Stop 7: Mayor Henry C. Cole

9/11/2020

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Kokomo’s Crown Point Cemetery is enormous. It covers sixty-five acres of Kokomo’s northeast side. And it’s old, established in 1867.

When I visited Crown Point on the seventh of May of 2017, I first sought out Kokomo’s irrepressible, legendary mayor, Henry C. Cole, who took up permanent residency there in September of 1881. Cole was only 43 when he was killed late one night by a flurry of birdshot fired at him by a posse of his peers at the local flour mill.

A larger-than-life, Robin Hood-like hero, Cole was tall, graceful, and handsome with lustrous blue eyes and a long, silky beard. He radiated a charisma that women fawned over and men shunned. On the flip side, he could be an erratic hothead prone to fits of rage, evidenced by one day in 1866, when he dropped in at his neighborhood post office and unexpectedly came face to face with his wife’s lover.

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